Tons of news came flooding out of the Tokyo Game Show today. While TGS has been fairly sedate in recent years, it seems jam-packed with all kinds of interesting stuff this time… the highlights:
A revamp of Devil May Cry, powered by Ninja Theory. There's already been tremendous amounts of talk on the subject, but here's my personal take—Devil May Cry 3 (the Special Edition) was the high point of the series, and although Dante & Co. still rock a fairly high cool factor, the series is definitely due for a top-to-bottom shakeup. That said, Ninja Theory remains an unknown quantity in my mind. Their first effort (the PS3's Heavenly Sword) was uneven and wildly overrated. Their soon-to-be-released Enslaved looks great in screenshots and videos, but its true nature won't be known until controller is in hand. Is Ninja Theory the right studio for Devil May Cry? The trailer looks quite intriguing, but time will tell…
Shadow of the Damned. A demon-hunting game coming from Shinji Mikami (Resident Evil) Akira Yamaoka (Silent Hill) and Suda 51 (Killer 7). While there's no doubt that these three are some of the most notable names in the business, I have to admit that the trailer didn't really do a lot for me. It's hard to put my finger on it, but the word "kitsch" kept coming to mind while watching it, and you can almost point to individual elements that were shown and call them out from other games. It's way too early to tell, but my spider sense was tingling a little bit on this one.
ICO and Shadow of the Colossus remakes confirmed. I'm not a big believer in re-buying software that I already own, but when first playing through both of these classics, I have to admit that I felt as though both of them would have been better served by more powerful hardware. There's not a lot of info right now, but I'm hoping that the games will get a deep retooling rather than a quick and dirty polish-up. Either way, it's always good news to see quality games like these be made available to people who missed them the first time around.
Dead Rising 2: Case West. If you ask me, Capcom really hit home run with Case Zero… creating a bite-sized "prequel" experience that was complete in and of itself was a brilliant alternative to crafting the kind of standard demo that generally fails to impress, and now they've announced another piece of similar DLC. Case West will serve as an epilogue to Dead Rising 2, and will star both current hero Chuck Greene as well as the original DR protagonist, photojournalist Frank West. Although Frank has made appearances in a number of games since starring in DR, players have never really received the kind of closure that they've craved. Anyone who saw the "real" ending to Dead Rising was no doubt wondering what happened next… hopefully this DLC will give us the answer.
Radiant Silvergun coming to XBLA. More than anything else so far, this is the news that really blew my mind. I've never been much of an importer and only had the chance to play it once years ago, but what I saw was extremely impressive. Besides that, everyone who's played it has had nothing but raves. I've never understood why Treasure never brought this Saturn shooter to the states, and would have bought it immediately if it had ever been available in any domestic format whatsoever. Unfortunately, since new Japanese copies regularly go for between $200-$300 (or more) on eBay, I could never really justify the cost. The thought of having this holy grail of gaming available as a download puts an extremely big smile on my face. Finally, after all these years… I guess dreams really do come true.
Transformers fan. MOTU stan. Black Lives Matter, pro-LGBTQIA. Anti-fascist.
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I am still trying to figure out why Dante went from generic Jrocker to generic US film teen heartthrob…I mean….at least he was better built as the Jrocker…..